In a statement given to Kotaku, Valve said it had made a “mistake” in “prematurely issuing a copy of War Z for sale via Steam”.

“We apologize for this and have temporary removed the sale offering of the title until we have time to work with the developer and have confidence in a new build. Those who purchase the game and wish to continue playing it via Steam may do so. Those who purchased the title via Steam and are unhappy with what they received may seek a refund by creating a ticket at our support site here,” the statement said.

It’s unusual for Steam to offer full purchase price back as opposed to “up to a full refund”.

Hammerpoint seems to believe the removal has more to do with its communication than any quality concerns, with Sergey Titov saying the developer is “making sure that our Store page is 100% correct”.

“Bottom line – our end goal is to have satisfied and not angry customers, so this is more important for us than everything else,” he said.

Titov’s comment about happy consumers is quite a change from statements given over the last few days; speaking to Kotaku yesterday, and later Gamespy, the developer hotly defended the Steam store page’s inaccuracies and blamed a vocal minority for increasing negative perception of the game.

The War Z has also been involved in several quiet scandals over the last few weeks, with growing talk community members banned from the game, its forums and even the Steam forum for raising concerns about the MMO’s quality. It’s difficult to substantiate such claims from word-of-mouth reports but there’s no use pretending players aren’t saying it.